Modern Trends

 There are several trends in modern life that might be expected to have significant economic and political effects. Three of the most prominent are:

1. The trend toward experiencing things and away from accomplishing things. Another way to state this is that there is a trend toward entertainment and way from production. This trend is facilitated by several factors: the prominence of mass media available on mobile devices, the progress of computer technology in creating virtual experiences, and affluence which makes the luxury of entertainment ore readily accessible. The distinction is illustrated by video games. When on plays a video game he is experiencing something; same as when he watches a movie; but it is a stretch to say that he accomplishes anything. Outside of his own personal experiences in the video game environment the world is little changed by his exploits. 

In general people tend to pay for experiences and get paid for accomplishments. Furthermore, the trend in favor of experiences, particularly virtual ones, distorts the perception of risk, in that most experiences are designed as to minimize obvious physical perils. There are also psychological consequences of this trend, as the effects on such things as self-esteem, goal-setting, satisfaction and even happiness are different for real-world accomplishments and manufactured experiences.

2. The trend toward substituting the subjective for the objective. This is seen quite prominently in conflicts that arise from how the speech or opinions of one person make another feel, and the notion that those feelings should create what are effectively legal obligations on the parts of others. The rise of this trend is simply the extension of childhood expectations about the world into adulthood, and accommodation of this extension that is enabled by affluence and security. It is, like entertainment, a luxury commodity that is unlikely to persist when the real-world consequences of this trend begin producing tangible harms. Subjective feelings cannot be squared with objective facts, for the simple reason that these feelings will vary from person to person and inevitably create conflicts that cannot be resolved. The short-term artifice of prioritizing feelings is doomed to failure over the long term, because the act of prioritizing will simply provoke other conflicting, subjective feelings. The prioritization is itself subjective and will invite resistance from those whose feelings are slighted by not being given higher priority.

This trend is the effluent of the fashionable politics of grievance and complaint. It is a trend that seeks validation of emotional wants and psychological needs in defiance of the natural consequences that the resulting indulgence provokes. 

3. The trend away from the scarcity of necessities. This trend, largely the result of technological innovation and economic progress challenges some of the presumptions inherent in long-established economic theories. No one in advanced societies die of famine anymore, and homelessness is not a matter of the inability to provide sufficient shelters. The economic theories that permitted practical modeling based on trade-offs in economic decision-making, and permitted at least first-order approximations between money and commodities are challenges by the decreasing fact of scarcity in bare essentials. A job market that would create employment in agriculture as a necessary effect of staving off food-shortages is no longer a given. One consequence of this, whether the jobs in question are in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, medicine, etc. is that employment and labor have a more tenuous relationship to scarcity, and a job is no longer essential to deal with the effects of scarcity. In some places, jobs become optional, inviting social and psychological consequences that are largely unknown.